The final piece for my class trip to Costa Rica over Wintersession, created the week after our return to sort of "sum up" the experience. Translated, the title reads "keep it and it will grow." It's a kind of self-portrait dealing with personal symbols, and the act of collecting and guarding objects and giving them meaning.

Very mixed media sculpture...the bust is paperclay, with real palm roots. The box is a little wooden crate I've had for years. Real monarch butterfly, red seeds collected in Costa Rica, little wooden pedestal, and Brahma cattle teeth (also collected in Costa Rica) bound up in thread. The designs painted on the sides of the box are inspired by the traditional hand-painted ox-carts of Sarchi. Also, the inside of the box is papered with newsprint from the late 1700s...and I will admit that part has no meaning other than being aesthetically pleasing to me. The little necklace is twine with a limpet shell I found on the South Pacific coast.